The Great War, Independence, and Latvian Literature

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (4 (463)) ◽  
pp. 9-21
Author(s):  
Benedikts Kalnačs
Keyword(s):  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
First Century ◽  
Great War ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Direct Experience ◽  
Nation States ◽  
History Of ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Great War ◽  
Written Sources

The article focuses on the representation of the year 1918 in Latvian literature. On November 18, the independent Republic of Latvia was proclaimed, and in the years to come international recognition of the state’s sovereignty followed. In retrospect, this event stimulated a number of salutary descriptions and interpretations and certainly provides a milestone in the history of the Latvian nation. It is, however, also important to discuss the proclamation of independence in the context of the Great War that brought a lot of suffering to the inhabitants of Latvia. Therefore, a critical evaluation of the events preceding the year 1918 is certainly worthy of discussion. The article first sketches the historical and geopolitical contexts of the period immediately before and during the Great War as well as the changed situation in its aftermath. This introduction is followed by a discussion of the novel 18 (2014) by the contemporary Latvian author Pauls Bankovskis (b. 1973) that provides a critical retrospective of the events leading to the proclamation of the nation state from a twenty-first century perspective. Bankovskis employs an intertextual approach, engaging with a number of earlier publications dealing with the same topic. Among the authors included are Anna Brigadere, Aleksandrs Grīns, Sergejs Staprāns, Mariss Vētra, and others. The paper contextualizes the contribution of these writers within the larger historical picture of the Great War and the formation of the nation states and speculates on the contemporary relevance of the representation of direct experience, and the use of written sources related to these events.

Marginalized Memories and Multi-Layered Narratives of the Great War in Kamila Shamsie’s A God In Every Stone (2014)

2020 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-246
Author(s):  
Tara Talwar Windsor
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Great War ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Global Context ◽  
The Great War

Abstract Taking Kamila Shamsie’s 2014 war novel A God in Every Stone as its core case study, this article examines the development of increasingly complex, heterogeneous and inclusive understandings and memories of the Great War in the twenty-first century. It demonstrates how the novel’s complex and intricate narrative, as well as its paratextual framing and much of its reception, offer a timely engagement with a range of hitherto hidden or marginalized histories, particularly in relation to the role of women and experiences of South Asian soldiers, as well as with colonial violence and anti-colonial resistance in the war’s aftermath. At the same time, the novel underscores the ambivalences contained in those stories. Through this analysis, the article considers the extent to which A God in Every Stone can be seen as a ‘more expansive form of commemoration [...] with the scope for multiple narratives’.1 The novel is also ‘historically and ethically responsible’, not least in its critical reflection on the purposes, practices and power structures behind longer-standing historical narratives and cultural memories of the war itself and the (imperial) past in a post-colonial global context.

Civil War in Central Europe, 1918-1921

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jochen Böhler
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
Second Republic ◽  
Central European ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Great War

The Great War had come to an end in Europe in November 1918, but Central Europe did not come to a rest. The demise of the German, Austrian, and Russian Empires had left a geographical void, a theatre of armed conflicts between the imperial heirs for years to come: the Central European nation states. The Second Republic of Poland was one of them. Historiography has described these postwar struggles as rather unrelated conflicts. This book argues that they were much more part of one Central European Civil War. Since re-erected Poland was at the center of events, it provides a perfect case study and tells the story of this civil war in a nutshell. It challenged its neighbors on all frontiers: Ukrainians, Lithuanians, and Soviets to the northeast, Germans to the west, and Czechs to the south. A concise history of these related conflicts questions their common perception as moments of national bravado. In the embattled borderlands, nationality was not a constant, and national independence therefore not a matter of course. The people living there experienced the Central European Civil War rather as a tragedy, when brothers had to fight against brothers. Clearly defined nations did not exist in late 1918 Central Europe, they were rather forged in the fires of a civil war which shook the area for almost three years. Furthermore, in the leeway of these conflicts, Poland—like many other parts of Europe—witnessed a wave of paramilitary violence, with its own soldiers running wild beyond the battlefields.

Review of A school history of the Great War.

1919 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 176-176
Author(s):  
No authorship indicated
Keyword(s):  
Great War ◽  
School History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Great War

scholarly journals Irish consequences of the Great War

2015 ◽  
Vol 39 (156) ◽  
pp. 643-658 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Fitzpatrick
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
Great War ◽  
Irish History ◽  
Public Response ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Great War ◽  
The Postponement

AbstractIt is now widely admitted that the Great War was also Ireland’s war, with profound consequences for every element of Irish life after 1914. Its impact may be discerned in aberrant aspects of Ireland’s demographic, economic and social history, as well as in the more familiar political and military convulsions of the war years. This article surveys recent scholarship, assesses statistical evidence of the war’s social and economic impact (both positive and negative), and explores its far-reaching political repercussions. These include the postponement of expected civil conflict, the unexpected occurrence of an unpopular rebellion in 1916, and public response to the consequent coercion. The speculative final section outlines a number of plausible outcomes for Irish history in the absence of war, concluding that no single counterfactual history of a warless Ireland is defensible.

History of the Great War Based on Official Documents: Naval Operations. Vol. 3

1924 ◽  
Vol 63 (6) ◽  
pp. 546
Author(s):  
D. W. B. ◽  
Julian S. Corbett
Keyword(s):  
Great War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Naval Operations ◽  
The Great War

Rīgas humānistu motīvs Roalda Dobrovenska romānā „Magnus, dāņu princis”

2021 ◽  
pp. 172-180
Author(s):  
Ausma Cimdiņa
Keyword(s):  
Life Story ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Human Society ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Russian State ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Role

The novel “Magnus, the Danish Prince” by the Russian diaspora in Latvia writer Roald Dobrovensky is seen as a specific example of a biographical and historical genre, which embodies the historical experience of different eras and nations in the confrontation of globalisation and national self-determination. At the heart of the novel are the Livonian War and the historical role and human destiny of Magnus (1540–1683) – the Danish prince of the Oldenburg dynasty, the first and the only king of Livonia. The motif of Riga’s humanists is seen both as one of the main ideological driving forces of the novel and as a marginal reflection in Magnus’s life story. Acknowledged historical sources have been used in the creation of the novel: Baltazar Rusov’s “Livonian Chronicle”; Nikolai Karamzin’s “History of the Russian State”; Alexander Janov’s “Russia: 1462–1584. The Beginning of the Tragedy. Notes of the Nature and Formation of Russian Statehood” etc. In connection with the concept of Riga humanists, another fictitious document created by the writer Dobrovensky himself is especially important, namely, the diary of Johann Birke – Magnus’s interpreter, a person with a double identity, “half-Latvian”, “half-German”. It is a message of an alternative to the well-known historical documents, which allows to turn the Livonian historical narrative in the direction of “letocentrism” and raises the issue of the ethnic identity of Riga’s humanists. Along with the deconstruction of the historically documented image of Livonian King Magnus, the thematic structure of the novel is dominated by identity aspects related to the Livonian historical narrative. Dobrovensky, with his novel, raises an important question – what does the medieval Livonia, Europe’s common intellectual heritage, mean for contemporary Latvia and the human society at large? Dobrovensky’s work is also a significant challenge in strengthening emotional ties with Livonia (which were weakened in the early stages of national historiography due to conflicts over the founding of nation-states).

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